Wednesday 30 January 2013 11.14 EST
First published on Wednesday 30 January 2013 11.14 EST

B is for Bayreuth, the capital of Upper Franconia in southern Germany, but more to the point the capital of Wagneria – it styles itself "Wagnerstadt" on local signs. It is a pleasant, quiet, conservative town that would be as obscure as Leamington Spa were it not for the fact that in the 1870s Richard Wagner decided to build an opera house there.

Bayreuth Opera House. Photograph: Johannes Simon/Getty Images

Wagner visited Bayreuth in 1870, hoping to stage his works at the beautiful, jewel-like Margrave Opera House. But he decided it was too small to accommodate his wondrous inventions, so set about building his own at the top of a hill on the outskirts of the town, on land given to him by the burghers of Bayreuth, who cleverly realised that 130 years later worshipful Wagnerians would still be making the pilgrimage to the town for the summer festival.

The Festspielhaus, designed by Otto Brückwald to Wagner's precise specifications, opened on 13 August 1876 with Das Rheingold. Early festivals were intermittent because of Wagner's perpetual financial problems, but eventually they became annual and were hugely oversubscribed. Wagner also built a house in Bayreuth, and is buried there, at the bottom of the garden.